


Wednesday and Thursday

by nausicaa_lives



Category: The Breakfast Club (1985)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 19:58:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17049611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nausicaa_lives/pseuds/nausicaa_lives
Summary: Because for all the emphasis on Monday, there are four more days after that in the school week.





	Wednesday and Thursday

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rhps_brad_fan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhps_brad_fan/gifts).



It’s Wednesday, and he just wants to drop his physics stuff off in exchange for his latin textbook, when a shadow’s cast over his locker contents. A muscled arm appears next to his locker and he feels warmth on his back. He turns around, and it doesn’t escape Brian that, from the outside, Andy’s posture makes it look like he’s shaking Brian down for homework. Smart. Brian has no idea what he’s trying to do though.

  
“Uh. Claire talked to me. She wanted to make sure you were... okay.”  
She wanted to make sure he was okay? What?

“Sure, I’m fine.”  
Andy shakes his head. “Like, wanted to make sure you weren’t gonna do anything.”

“Well, tell her not to worry, I’m not going to go try and talk to her or anything. I’m not stupid.”Andy shakes his head again, like Brian still isn’t getting it.

“No. Because of what you did to get into detention.” He pauses pointedly. Oh, Brian thinks. It’s about that.

“She-she can talk to me herself if she’s so worried. You know, she hasn’t even looked at me since Saturday. She can’t even look at me.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s not decent of her. That’s why she’s worried, cause she thinks you might take it the wrong way,”

“...is there a right way?”

Brian never talked to jocks like this before, and he shouldn’t now. However shitty it might’ve been, Claire was right. They’re not friends. Brian shouldn’t mouth off to someone who’s been basically bred to beat people like him up. But there’s something in Andy’s face that tells Brian he won’t beat him up, won’t drag him in front of the other wrestling guys and show off Brian’s tighty-whiteys.

“No, I know. There’s not. There’s not a right way.” He pauses, his face open. Brian thinks Andy would want to fix things if he knew how, where to start. He thinks that Claire does know how, but she’s too scared. Andy looks down, continues, “Anyway, she’s worried. Because of, you know, us not being—what she said about us not being friends.”

“God. She wants to make sure I won’t off myself because she didn’t wave hello to me? You know, I didn’t expect her to! And-and god, that’s really presumptuous of her!” Brian’s grateful that Andy’s being-whatever, not throwing him down, that he's looking him in the eye and letting Brian know that he knows it’s not fair. But apparently not grateful enough to leave this ridiculous notion of Claire’s alone, because the pushy words just seemed to come out of him, like they did on Saturday. Thankfully he’s not crying like a goddamn girl this time.

“Look, will you just say you won’t do it?” Andy asks.

“If she wants to know how I’m doing, she can ask me how I’m doing herself.” Brian ducks under Andy’s right arm, still up against the locker next to his. He realizes, walking away, that he forgot his Latin textbook, but Andy’s still there with his big body poised against over his locker, just standing there, and Brian’s not about to run back, maneuver his way into his locker, and run away with a textbook clutched in his arms. He’d almost managed to seem like someone confident for a second. He’ll just look on with Josh in Latin.

Brian doesn’t know why he didn’t just say, yeah, he wasn’t gonna off himself and be done with it. But Claire’d got it all wrong. He turns over, tugging his comforter with him. Claire’d got it all wrong. Did she seriously think, after everything with the flare gun, that what was going to push him over the edge would be Claire Standish not talking to him? If he can live with a B, and the jury’s still out on that, really, he’s still trying to figure out some way, any way, to fix things before report cards come out, but if he has thus far managed to live with a B, like hell he wouldn’t be able to take Claire avoiding eye contact in the hallway.

He turns back over on his left, kicking his comforter off entirely. Ever since Monday, whenever he’s in her eyeline she’ll get this wounded, petulant sort of look as if she’s the one being ignored, only for a fraction of a second before she tightens her face back together and pouts her lips in place and looks into the distance. Honest to god, she just thinks everything revolves around her. She probably thinks he hates being friends with other nerds, thinks that they don’t count, that no one could be happy unless they had friends that judged them every second so they knew they were cool. If only she knew—Brian flips his pillow, bangs it a couple times against the mattress to fluff it back up, and flips it again—his friends don’t look up to her. They’re jealous of her, sure, and scared, and god knows everyone in Math club would give their TI-35 and their left eyeball to do it with her, or to do it at all, but his friends are smart, and they know that they’re going places that Claire’ll only be able to get to on someone’s arm. Even Sasha, who’s blotchy and pretends she isn’t bothered when the guys talk about girls like Claire and wanting girlfriends and never look twice at her, told Brian once she didn’t wish she was one of them, someone like Claire or Andy. They’re going to Northwestern and MIT and University of Chicago and Claire’s going to go to some state school paying full tuition before becoming a sad housewife if she’s lucky.

He looks up at his ceiling. That speckled white texture, looking blue in the dark. It was Claire’s decision to say they wouldn’t be friends, and if Claire’s getting all guilty about it afterward, she can just deal with it. All she wants is confirmation she isn't responsible, so she won't feel guilty if they find his body rotting somewhere, and he’s not going to give it to her. If she doesn’t feel bad enough to talk to him herself, she can just stew in it for all Brian's concerned.

He has friends, and he likes them, it isn't like they're worse than Claire or Andy or Bender or Allison. Sasha and Josh are really funny, and Nate does the craziest proofs, and things are—well, they're okay. Only. Only they don't know, they don't know about the elephant lamp, about the flare gun, and how the light didn’t go on when he needed it to and about how the flare went off when in the school day when he really, really needed it not to. People saw the flare coming out of his locker, but were shooed to class before two administrators forced it open and saw what was inside. Later, when people asked, Brian said it was a science experiment, and they believed him. Brian doesn’t think he can tell them, it just-he doesn’t think he will.

He remembers telling Allison he’d say hi to her in the hall, if he saw her, if he was with his friends. He hasn’t seen her yet, except from a distance. She’s quiet, and for someone so demonstrably strange she sure blends in. He wonders if he was supposed to find her, Monday, say something. Brian turns over again, back to his left side. Half-turns his body one more time, so his face is pressed into his pillow and the weight of his back presses his body into the mattress, and closes his eyes.

It’s Thursday, and apparently it’s a one-by-one Breakfast Club reunion at Brian’s locker because today it’s Bender, leaning right up against Brian’s locker. At this rate Claire’ll be at his locker ready for some serious confabulation by next Monday morning. Brian chuckles to himself softly at the thought of her standing primly, awkwardly by his locker. God, as if. 

“Wow, laughing into the abyss, you really have gone round the bend, haven’t you?”

“Can I help you?”  
“Well I heard that the brain is right on the brink of self termination, and I just had to see for myself.” Bender says the words “self termination” with probably 60% more consonant emphasis than is necessary.

“God, who told you that?”

“I know things.”

“Well, I’m not, okay. But I’m not going to,” Brian pauses briefly to come up with something, “-to notarize a letter to that effect, or anything, just so you can-so you can ease Claire’s conscience and get laid. I mean I- it isn’t even-” Bender puts a hand on Brian’s chest and pushes him into his own locker. The action is a familiar one, the kind of thing Brian’s gotten used to in his days at Shermer High, and before that at Shermer Middle. Bender's words aren’t.

“You. Need to calm down.”

Brian looks back and forth quick, to see if any teachers or hall monitors or friends are around in the hallway, and half -whispers, “I can’t get high, I have a test this afternoon!”

Bender rolls his eyes. “Who said I was gonna give you any of my weed anyway, dweeb.”

“I-”

“Come smoke with me in the parking lot.”

“What?”

“Come. Smoke,” Bender says, like he’s speaking to a slow child. There’s something familiar about the words.

“You’re just inviting me to do that because Claire said you wouldn’t.”

“I’m doing it because Claire was wrong.”

“You’re doing it… to prove Claire wrong.”

“Claire didn’t know shit, and you don’t know shit either. You don’t know why I want to do things, you don’t know what I want to prove. You. Don’t. Know. Shit.” Bender’s face is close to his now, his jaw set, his eyes flaring wide. “You dumb half-suicidal fuck.” Then he pulls back. Takes a couple steps back too. “You should come smoke.”

“Uh. Okay. But I have Spanish.”

“Oh, and it’ll kill you to miss one class?” Bender doesn’t realize what he’s said until Brain raises his eyebrows at him, and then he just looks down and lets a breath out. It’s almost like he feels, god, not awkward, not John Bender, but maybe a not-so-distant relative. Brian can’t help it. He feels his lips pull up involuntarily and laughs. Bender looks up and he grins.

They’re doing group work in Spanish today, to get ready to present their projects next week. Brian’s group has had theirs done since Tuesday. Ms. Nunez takes attendance, but she’s lenient about marking down grades because of it. Brain just wants to do something else, something his parents don’t want and Claire doesn’t expect. No, not her, this isn’t about her, not everything’s about her. He wants to do something he doesn’t expect. Smoking in the parking lot isn’t like shooting yourself in the head. He always thought he might crack. He always felt just on the edge of breaking. He never thought he would change, change and not die. Brian chuckles again.

“No, it won’t kill me.”


End file.
